This blog has permanently moved to a new blogging address. Come on over to
The Potter's Shed!


Saturday, January 22, 2011

Epiphany Season Menus

In the past, the sweet blogger at Evlogia has shared seasonal menus.  She creates  a basic one week menu that is repeated for the whole season.  The seasons being based on a Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar.  Tried the one week and it wasn't enough variety for my family.  This Advent and Christmas I tried an alternating week with a few changes here and there for feast days.  It worked fairly well - although I find I don't stick to it perfectly.  Very typical of me.

While I'm a little late (also typical), I have done my Epiphany Season/Ordinary Time menu and thought I'd share it with you!  I love having it planned out...I don't have to think what is for dinner - or lunch - or breakfast.  But I will say that we are terrible at keeping to my plan for breakfast, excellent with lunch, and fairly good with dinner. Things do come up, so sometimes we have to "punt".  (I keep a supply of quick and easy dinners around: frozen asian dumplings, pasta and sauce, etc)  

If you are not a menu planner, this may seem like a straightjacket.  I promise you it isn't.  It actually gives you quite a bit of freedom!  Give it a try and see what you think.  Plan out some basic meals.  Try not to plan pasta meals back to back.  Or soup for lunch and dinner.  Give some thought to how you can piggy-back meals (roast chicken becomes soup later in the week).  Often I keep one evening free and call it "Clean out the Fridge"....we eat leftovers or whatever we scrounge up.  (We aren't doing it now because hubby and I are eating leftovers at lunch - the planned meals in the menu are for the kids.)  Just remember the menu plan is there to help you...if you all have a hankering for tacos and the menu says pasta - ditch the plan!  You own it, not the other way around. 

Recipes for my menu plans will be posted here and there.  If there is one you'd really like to have, please let me know.

Here is the link to the Google Doc: Epiphany Meals

Have a productive Saturday and a restful Sunday!


2 comments:

Unknown said...

I never thought about ordering our menu around the seasons of the church calendar. I love your selections. I may have to give this a try.

Kerry said...

Sure, Chuck! This all began when I began trying to feed our family a bit more "seasonably" a couple of years ago. I was already having a feast day here and there, so it made sense to roll those into a seasonable menu.

After seeing the posts at Evlogia, I thought that if we are living a liturgical life, it made sense to organize even our meals around that...for more than just feast days. It is especially helpful for big fast times like Lent and feast times like Christmas.